Tuesday's War, page 31
‘No. I deliberately stay away. We sometimes get the niff of it over here when the wind’s in the wrong direction. Horrible.’
‘Even more horrible to drown in.’
‘Fat Guts had only been here a couple of months: you could have walked into it if you didn’t know it was there. The grass had grown over it just like the rest of the field. Wasn’t it marked out with tapes and a couple of warning signs?’
‘Yeah, Charlie: you could have walked into it, with your hands tied behind your back and a sack of cement tied to your belt. But then again; unlikely.’ He let that sink in. ‘One of the runway maintenance guys was over there ferreting, and noticed that something had gone through the surface.’
‘Can’t say we’ll miss him: he knocked his people about. What happens next?’
‘The group captain will try to keep it in-house, but my guess is that they’ll soon have an HQ special team crawling all over us. Supercilious bastards.’
‘You don’t like them, then?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Why are you telling me this, Alex?’
‘Because for me and my boss this will have to take priority over anything else we’ve been asked to do. For instance, if we’d had a signal from HQ last night telling us to turn the station upside down, looking for an elusive Polish rear gunner with a penchant for dabbling in politics, and any illegal black market materials associated with it, we won’t be able to do it until after the flap over the fat man has finished, will we?’
I turned away from him. I hope that I didn’t blush.
Later, Grease asked me, ‘What did he say?’
‘He said they’ve found the body of Fat Guts from the mess in the old latrine pit on the other side of the field.’
‘Ugh,’ said Grease, ‘what a way to go. Saves me a job, though.’ I was relieved that he said that. I had immediately wondered. Even so, I was far from sure he hadn’t had a hand in it. ‘What else?’
‘I’m not sure, but he told me to get rid of anything embarrassing before they come for it, I think. Tomorrow at the latest.’
Krefeld
We were on. Would you believe Krefeld again? What was left to bomb there? We saw something that pleased and depressed me simultaneously. What pleased me was seeing the whole crew get out of a cripple of a Lanc. It was nice to know that the parachutes sometimes worked when you needed them. We were over Holland on the return trip, and plugging for home at our best cruising speed. Two night fighters had had a sniff at us just after target, and twice Grace and the Toff had driven them back with a withering concentration of fire: they were getting quite good at putting all their bullets in one place. It must have been discouraging for the old Kraut. The second one got one or two bullets on us as it dived past: I heard them zip through Tuesday’s sides, and one of them, almost spent, whanged off the main spar. Everyone answered the call-through. We caught up with a damaged Mk 2 straggler in Holland: it was lower than us and skipping on top of the cloud base. It had nothing burning, but its big fat starboard inner was trailing dense black smoke as if either it had caught fire, or wanted to. The prop was just windmilling in the airstream. Great chunks of the wing surface had been ripped away. It looked like flak damage over the target to me; bleeding miracle she’d got that far.
Fergal stood up to look over Grease, as we came up on its right. ‘She won’t make it, Skip,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘They’ve smashed up all the fuel cells in the starboard wing. Even if she doesn’t burn, or fall to bits, she’ll run out of juice before we even get to the Channel.’
I could see their sparks in his astrodome looking at me over about fifty yards of cold dark air. He drew a gloved finger slowly across his throat. I clicked. ‘They know. Their sparks just gave me the finger.’
It strained up for another hundred or so feet above the cloud layer, and then the bodies started to leave; first of all two from under the nose, quickly followed by one from the rear door. The sparks gave a brief wave and then ducked out of sight. Within half a minute three more bodies came through the rear door, just like that: one, two, three. That left just the pilot, and that was always the sod of these big bombers. As soon as he took his hands off the column they spun, or just dropped out of the sky, pinning the poor bugger inside before he had the chance to get out. He flew on alone in the empty aircraft for about another four minutes; what must that have been like? Probably trying to decide which exit to jump for. When you were caught in one of those, up above the dying Reich, there was no usherette with a torch to show you the cinema door, believe me. Then the wing went. It didn’t break off, or fold back – I’ve seen that before – it simply disintegrated into whirling pieces, and what was left of the old girl flipped straight over on her back. As that happened the last body dropped out of the emergency hatch above the pilot’s head. How he didn’t clart himself on the rudders I’ll never know, but the bomber dropped away into the cloud, and his chute showed before he did as well.
‘Seven parachutes; did you see that?’ I told Conroy, for his log. ‘Seven lovely bloody big parachutes.’
Fergal clicked, and said, ‘Engineer. Are the natives below friendly, Nav?’
‘Maybe. They might have come far enough,’ Conners said.
Marty had said it first; some things are better than sex. Seeing all seven bodies get clear of a stricken Lancaster is one of them. It was the first time on ops that I had been prompted to pray. I filled my lungs with ox and thought Thank you, God, but must have said it aloud instead, because the Toff, and then Grace, said, ‘Amen.’
‘Pilot to crew: don’t lose it, people. Keep your eyes open, we’re not home yet,’ Grease said.
What depressed me was that the Lanc had been one of ours. It was D-Dog. Whittaker and his crew called her Der Dog’s Bollocks. It depressed me because I had started to like the Whittaker team: they’d racked a good few trips in a short period, and were starting to look safe. We could have kissed Grease for his landing that morning: you get medals for touchdowns as smooth as that.
Alex was waiting for me at the door as I left the interrogation hut. Grease and Harriet were still talking together across the table: she leaned over and squeezed his hand.
Dwarfed in Alex’s hand was a small buff envelope. He thrust it at me, and said, ‘I warned you about this.’
Oh Christ. Give me one more day, please, God!
‘What?’
He took what was simple fatigue to be truculence.
‘Using my office as a personal bleeding messenger service. Here.’
Eat humble pie time, Charlie.
‘Sorry, Alex. I’m bushed.’
‘Bad, was it?’
‘So-so. Hey; but listen to this. I saw Dog’s Bollocks go down over Holland, and all of the bastards got out!’
‘All?’
‘I counted the bloody parachutes, Alex; isn’t that just marvellous?’
He put his arm over my shoulder, just like he had done the day before, and steered me to the mess. I wasn’t always sure about people touching me uninvited. Perhaps I should introduce him to Quelch. Then I realized that I hadn’t seen Quelch, so I asked him if he’d heard anything.
Quelch was the night’s second little miracle. He’d ditched Mother, dead empty of fuel, in a flat, calm swell off Brighton Pier, miles off track to the south, and they all rowed ashore. Confounding their evil sea-worthiness reputation, his Lanc was still afloat the next morning. Then the Blue Jobs chopped off its tail with a minesweeper while they were trying to get a line on it, and it sank half a mile from the shingle, despite their efforts. Q was livid when he got back: he said that she knew where she was going, and left to herself she would have made the beach alone.
The envelope containing the phone message had a single sheet with a single typed line on Alex’s typewriter.
Phone me tomorrow, if you can.
It’s nice to have a choice, I suppose, except when you are as tired as I was. I showed it to Alex asking, ‘Who was it?’
‘The American bird who left a message before. I didn’t know that there was more than one.’
Tomorrow was the today during which we had to get rid of the money. I phoned the ARC Club early. Emily Rea wasn’t there, but I recognized the voice of the girl who answered the telephone without being able to place her. I told her who I was, and she said, ‘Hang on a tick; I’ll just look at the list.’ Then she said, ‘Yeah. You’re one of the Brits. Can you come to Major Wynn’s party tonight? We’ll kick off at about 2000.’
I relaxed. ‘What’s Peter done? Won a Congressional Medal?’
There was a beat of five or six. No response. Then, ‘No. Nothing like that.’ She suddenly had a quiet voice: a little girl’s voice. ‘He’s being buried at 1030 at Madingley. It’s an all-American send-off, but he wanted you to be at the party. He left a list.’
What would Mr Cooper have said? Just like that? Probably.
We split the money into seven amounts of £1,300. That still left more than £3,000. Then we drove around Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire opening up bank accounts like Bradford millionaires. I took a chance with just one. Conners split his into three – that was serious motoring. The Toff kept a couple of hundred in his pocket, despite the warnings, but opened two accounts. Marty and Grease opened two apiece in different banks. Fergal put his in an envelope inside an envelope, and at St Neots station gave it to the stationmaster, another Mick. He told us that it would be with his mother and father in Belfast before a letter could get there.
It was my first experience of the grown-up world of banking. The manager didn’t fancy me much, although he quickly reached out a claw-like hand for my money. He’d send me a cheque book, he said, in a fortnight. I told him that it was compensation for property taken over by the Americans. Everyone believed stories of places leased to the Americans. Grace dropped off at the local bank in Crifton, and paid £1,000 into one of her accounts. The time-expired cashier treated her like an old friend and ignored the sum, with which you could have bought a fair house, as if it had been her petty cash. Perhaps it was. Something odd passed between them: he counted the money but no receipt or signature changed hands, and when he asked, ‘In the usual account, Miss?’ she beamed and answered, ‘Why not?’
That left about three grand which the blokes wanted passed through Tommo. I phoned him, but he was close-mouthed. ‘See ya tonight, pal,’ was all he’d say, ‘at the Major’s do. Bring that stupid little car, will ya?’
If you thought that Wynn’s do might have been a subdued affair it just goes to show that you were never on the loose in the forties. That wasn’t our way to party. The joint was jumping. I put on my number ones and Grace helped me to spruce up. She put on her ATA bests, and partnered me. This time it was me that talked her over the threshold, because she wasn’t on Wynn’s list, whatever that was. For two people who had looked ready to set claws into each other a fortnight before, she and Emily treated each other kindly. Just a gentle hug that was held for a three beat. Then Emily did the same to me. She said, ‘You haven’t missed much. You know where the bar is Charlie; Grace and I will see you shortly.’
Befehl ist befehl again. I think that it was girls’ room stuff.
That man Braddock and his nav, Bourne, were propping up the bar again. Braddock had taken off about four inches of moustache at each wing tip. He touched what was left nervously, and asked me, ‘What do you think?’
‘Terrific. Like Douglas Fairbanks. Why did you do it?’
‘Got bored.’
Bourne shoved a glass of that cold, sharp American beer into my hand, and said, ‘He’s lying. Tell him the truth, Guv.’
‘Saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and thought it was the Jerry. Turned tight into him, and we went arse over tit into a spin. Turned out to be the end of my whiskers. Lost damned nigh 15,000 feet before I pulled out of it. Bloody silly.’
‘Now tell him the rest.’
‘Well, we made it, obviously, although the wings were in a funny attitude when we landed: the Mozzie looked as if it wanted to clap hands with its wing tips above the cockpit roof. Deuced odd.’
‘Deuced,’ I agreed.
‘And because George is turning into a windy old sod he said he wouldn’t fly with me any more if the same thing was going to happen again. Bloody old woman.’
‘So you gave them the chop?’
‘Don’t have the time to train another nav, do I, old boy?’
I noticed that they both had fresh ribbons. ‘Collecting gongs again?’
‘Just Bars.’
‘What for?’
‘Bringing the kite back without ripping its wings off, of course! What’s the matter with you Bassett; you were sharper than that a couple of weeks ago.’ Braddock had lost none of his charm.
‘I keep on expecting Peter Wynn to walk in. Do you know what happened?’ I said.
‘Someone shot us a line, but I don’t believe it. Ask one of the brethren, then come back and give us the gen.’ He turned away to the coloured barman and asked, ‘Another three of your delicious beers, my dear.’
The barman looked horrified, and showed the whites of his eyes, but produced the goods, which is why I had my second beer in my hand when Grace walked up. She looked as if she had had a small cry, but wasn’t unhappy with it. In fact she gurgled an unstable little laugh, and squeezed a few more tears out. A couple of the Yanks crowding the bar near us also laughed, probably at Grace’s laughter, but quickly looked embarrassed, and stifled it. I didn’t get it.
Emily pushed through the throng dragging Tommo behind her. ‘I tried to keep this type out but he threatened to buy the place from under me!’ she said.
‘He was probably on the Major’s list anyway,’ I said.
‘First name. Peter never forgot his friends.’
‘What happened?’
The black barkeep had put a big glass of bourbon in Tommo’s hand without being asked. For an NCO in an officers’ club I thought that that wasn’t bad going.
Tommo grabbed me by the elbow. ‘I’ll tell ya,’ he said, and steered me away to an austere little side office with a grey filing cabinet, a neat small utility desk and a plain chair. ‘Secretary’s office,’ he explained when he shut the door on the hubbub outside.
There were framed photographs in a line around the walls. In the last one I was posed with Braddock, George Bourne and some USAAF aircrew from that session with Lee Miller: we all looked suitably weary and martial at the same time. A small combo outside had started to play ‘Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer’, and it sounded as if half of Bedford was in the chorus line. The sergeant sat in the chair whilst I perched on the desk.
‘When did the Major draw up this list of people to attend his wake?’ I asked.
‘When he knew he’d bought it. He dictated it to an ARC nurse. He had a few hours.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not as sorry as the Major was. That mad redskin got chopped over Lubeck. The Major went into his billet to make sure his things were cleared out, sat on the fucking rattlesnake, which bit him on the fucking arse. They gave him the anti-venom when he got over to the doc’s, but by then it was too late: an’ you can’t throw a proper tourniquet around an arse, can you? The serum just gave him a few hours longer, that was all. Everyone who loved him came in to say goodbye.’
‘This wouldn’t be a line, would it, Tommo? Just winding a Brit up?’
‘I wish it was Charlie. The Major would have liked the turnout tonight, but he sure would have preferred to be here in person, I’d guess.’
‘Yes.’ It seemed the only appropriate thing to say.
Then Tommo laughed a little, and I think that I did too. ‘Those B-17s he flew have armour-plated seats for the pilots. He didn’t have an armour-plated seat the one time he really needed one.’
‘That’s how it always happens.’
‘You got some dough you need changed, you said?’
‘Thanks Tommo. It’s a bit more than I thought. The boys really appreciate this.’
I held out my hand for his before we reached the door.
‘Nice doing business with you Sergeant,’ I told him. His handshake was like Iron John.
‘And with you, partner,’ he said.
Was it my imagination, or did I feel the fish hook go straight in through my upper lip?
Grace was dancing with someone I recognized as one of Peter Wynn’s crew when we moved back into the bar, but she stopped when she spotted us, and her partner walked her across.
‘Hope you don’t mind, Sergeant,’ he said.
‘No, of course not. Thanks for looking out for her. Sorry about the Major.’
‘Yeah. Fine guy; great captain. Pity about his arse.’
‘What happened to the snake?’
‘Major made us promise not to kill it. It’s in a big glass box in the PX: it’s gonna be the base mascot.’
After he left, Grace asked me, ‘What was that all about? That boy was genuinely scared of you.’
‘Not me,’ I told her, and ruffled her hair. ‘Just the company I keep.’
She was just about to return serve when she followed my line of sight, and saw Tommo. He smiled back at her, showing his teeth. She looked at me, with new interest I thought. ‘I see what he means,’ she said.
Bourne and Braddock saw me through the cigarette smoke, and the latter had a question on his face as, with his drink-free hand, he animatedly pointed at his backside. I raised my glass to him and gave him the affirmative nod. He shrugged, and turned his attention back to an ARC nurse at the bar alongside him. I put a face to her voice now: she was the plump little redhead I’d met in London a million years BC. The band began to play ‘Blue Moon’, and Grace said, ‘Dance with me. We’re not going to stay too long, are we?’
Emily shook hands with me, and gave me a hug as we left. She said, ‘Everyone on the Major’s list gets to be a full member of this club from now on, Charlie. You tell them that when you get back to your base and they’ll have to make you an officer.’ She gave me an envelope, and said that some of Lee’s photos were in there for me: Grace took charge of them.
